Falls Apart
by Ivy Leaves
Summary: Akk. Don't ask. {songfic} An announcement leaves her unsteady. >> I think I'll make a sequel, because this doesn't elaborate on her feelings enough... anyway. Please read... PG for thoughts of suicide and swear word. [I am SO bad at dramatic fics...]


Falls Apart

**Falls Apart**

She falls apart by herself  
No one's there to talk or understand  
Feels the sting dries her eyes  
Finds herself opens the door and sighs  
People see right through you  
Everyone who knew you well  
Falls apart, might as well  
Day is long and nothing is wasted

The announcement was so unexpected. Completely and totally. They had fought before the heart attack, but afterwards? They were so loving, aware that every day was marked with a bright orange danger sign. Tread carefully, cholesterol has struck.

But then it had started again, two months earlier. Anger and rage unleashed—and now it was back to the way it was before, but worse, because the absolute low had arrived.

"You cannot be getting a divorce!" Brooke screamed, disturbing even the particles of dust from their resting places. "I mean—you can't be!"

She stormed off, tears beginning to snake their way down her cheeks that were reddened with anger. Winces echoed from the forms of Mr. and Mrs. Lanier as the bedroom door swung loudly into place. They then turned their eyes to Val with curiosity as to how she would react.

"So, does your opinion involve any door slamming?" Joanne inquired over-cheerfully. Val said nothing and rose.

"I'm late for my shift at the station," she informed them, heading out of the room. The closing of the door wasn't loud, but it signified the end very clearly.

Runaway, runaway  
Wanna hold on to you but you're going away  
Runaway, runaway  
Wanna hold you tomorrow but you're leaving today

"Is something wrong?" Tyler asked Val hesitantly late that night. Tears had begun to stain her paperwork. "What happened?"

"Nothing," she said, swallowing and picking up her pen again. "I'm fine."

"You're crying," he told her. "Unless you're sweating in this freezer of a station."

"Very funny," she sniffled.

"C'mon, Val…" He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and looked into her eyes. "Tell me what's the matter."

"Nothing's wrong, Tyler."_ Don't concentrate on how good it feels to have his arm there, concentrate on how you can't tell anyone, _she ordered herself.

"Tell me. Please?"_ Come on, Val… I can comfort you… That sounded like a weird pickup line, didn't it? Okay, forget that… Connell! She can't hear your fricking thoughts!_

"Nothing is wrong!" she insisted.

"Oh, and those drops on the paper are from the sprinkler system?" he inquired skeptically, drawing her head to his shoulder. "Tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing," she mumbled. Tyler sighed.

"I won't tell anyone, I swear."

_He _would_ understand, _she admitted to herself,_ and it feels so nice, him putting his arm around me and all…_

__She snuggled into his neck and confessed, "My parents are getting divorced."

"What?" Oh God—this was happening to Val?

"They're getting a divorce," she repeated. Tyler wrapped his arms around her shaking frame and gently rocked her.

You walk along by yourself  
There's no sound nothing's changing  
They've gone away left you there  
Emptiness is nothing you can share

Her eyes were soaked with tears as she crept into the station three minutes late. A week and a half after the announcement, but now another proclamation had been made, and this one was equally bad.

"I have to choose who to live with, because I'm 17," she informed them as they looked up at her. "And—and—my dad's moving to Chicago."

Of all their eyes, Tyler's seemed to be the most frightened. "Who are you going to choose?" he inquired unsteadily. Val shook her head and grabbed her uniform from her locker.

"I have no idea." She went off into the bathroom to change.

"Well, Tyler, you'd better tell her you like her before she runs away to Chicago and gets a new boyfriend," observed Hank.

"I don't like her," Tyler informed Hank and Jamie.

"Right," agreed Jamie with evident doubt in his voice. "And I'm an overachiever."

"I don't like her!" insisted Tyler. "I love her," he confessed.

Jamie and Hank exchanged glances and sighed meaningfully. This could turn out to be a bigger mess than anyone had expected.

All those words that hurt you  
More than you will let it show  
Comes apart by yourself  
All is well and everything's wasted

_ _

_PROS: Squad. School. Cheerleading. Friends. Caitie._

"All right, I agree with the Caitie part, but aren't you forgetting something?" Caitie inquired, tapping Val's Kingsport Pros/Cons list.

"You want me to list all my friends?"

"Tyler Connell, idiot."

"So you do want me to list all my friends," deduced Val, taking the list from Caitie. "Okay. So… Jamie, Hank, Tyler…"

"Oh God, Val, for how long are you going to pretend you don't like him?" Caitie grabbed the paper from Val's hands and took a pencil from the desk. "There. Crush on TC."

"Caitie!" exclaimed Val, removing the pencil and notebook paper from Caitie's hand. "For the last time, I do not have a crush on Tyler!"

"What about 'Oh, Caitie, he's so_ hot,' _huh? Remember that?"

Val turned a bright scarlet. "That was a long time ago." She erased_ Crush on TC. _Caitie shook her head disbelievingly and grabbed a pen.

"Gimme… that… list…" she ordered Val, jumping for it.—but Caitie was five two and Val was five nine, so it didn't really have the desired effect.

"No. I do not have a crush on Tyler. Admit it."

"Val, you do!"

"Do not. Say it or I won't give you the list."

"Okay, you don't have a crush on Tyler," conceded Caitie. Val smiled triumphantly and handed Caitie the list. Caitie grinned and scribbled something on it.

_In love with Tyler Connell _read the corrected paper.

Runaway, runaway  
Wanna hold on to you but you're going away  
Runaway, runaway  
Wanna hold you tomorrow but you're leaving today  
Sometimes I feel around  
It scares me some I can't be down

"Has anyone noticed that the only person Val's really been speaking to lately is Caitie?" Tyler asked the other two in the station. Val was in the supply closet doing inventory. "I mean, seriously. It's weird."

"Caitie is Val's best friend and the court order is in four days. Val has to decide who she wants to live with in less than a week so that they can work out custody arrangements," said Hank patiently. "She's going to be withdrawn."

"She already is," said Tyler, sadness in his eyes as he rose from the couch. "I'm going to go—help her with inventory. Or something."

*

"Hey, you need help?" Tyler questioned, looking down at Val, who sat in the middle of boxes of saline.

"Yeah." Val pushed her hair back from her forehead and managed a small smile, one of the few he had seen from her since the announcement. "Thanks."

"So you have four days to decide where you're going to live?" he asked. Val nodded, biting her lip.

"25 saline packages in here. Yeah. Chicago or Kingsport." Her tone was undecided and neutral.

"It's hard, isn't it?"

Val nodded, then seemed to realize what he had said… he had been through this. "How old were you when they split?"

"Thirteen." He looked down at his hands. "Originally I was going into partial custody but—my dad didn't want to take care of me. So he just sent child support money every week… those were pretty much the only things we ever got from him. Not greeting cards… not hey, how are you letters… not even postcards from Greece or Romania or wherever he was at the moment… just child support checks." He swallowed. "30 saline packages."

Val was still looking at him curiously. "You know what it's like when parents split?" she whispered, sounding as if she was desperate and needed to know that someone knew what she was going through.

"Too well."

Her gaze broke from his eyes, unsure of what to do. "I'm sorry."

"You don't need to be. Are we done with saline?"

All this time to be on my own  
In is out to be again  
This time will waste another friend  
I know where they will know  
Where they'll runaway

The court order was in three goddamn hours and she didn't even_ think _she knew where to go. Kingsport had Caitie, the station, the squad, Tyler… Chicago had… well, Chicago had everything Kingsport didn't, but she wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

She walked out of the house and down the sidewalk, not sure of where she was going, not sure of what she was doing, just letting her feet walk…

The tricycle was red, a supposed boys' color, but Val was a tomboy anyway and she loved it. Too small to ride a bicycle, the tricycle was perfect for her. The wheels spun wildly as she pedaled quickly down the sidewalk, voices of her mother and father drifting to her—"Honey, slow down…"

The memory ended there. She couldn't remember what happened next. Val sighed. So many memories here—but that might just as well be a reason to go.

She had been pulling away from everyone, and she knew it… but who could she not pull away from? Tyler knew what she was going through, and Caitie was her best friend, but even they didn't know how suffocated she felt…

And slowly she was pulling away. Slowly she was dying—and there were only three more hours to continue dying, and then she would either start all over again, like a phoenix from the ashes, or let herself fall. She didn't know what was happening, and she didn't expect to know anytime soon…

The park was calm and inviting. Amazingly, not many people were there, even on a warm Saturday morning. Val slowly crossed the emerald green grass and sat down on one of the swings, looking down at the ground and closing her eyes… 

She falls apart no one there  
Hold her hand it seems to disappear  
Falls apart might as well  
Day is long and nothing is wasted

"You decided yet?"

She opened her eyes in surprise and looked up into the face of Tyler.

"What are you doing here?"

"Worrying about you."

Val sighed. "I don't know where to go… you know that Tori Amos song? 'My scream got lost in a paper cup, do you think there's a heaven where the screams have gone…' Yeah, well, I think my scream has gotten lost, and if there's heaven for it, then I might as well just go up there anyway…" She upturned her face to the sky.

"No!" Tyler grabbed her arm fiercely. "You are not going to die, Val, and do not think about it. I know what you mean, I know how you feel, but suicide is not an answer!" Seeing the tears that fell from her eyes, he wiped them away. "Do you know how much I'd miss you if you went?"

"You'd miss me?" she asked.

"Of course." His voice was choked in his throat. "I'd miss you so incredibly that I don't think you can even imagine…"

There was a long pause.

"You don't have to worry," she told him, looking at the sky again. "I don't think I even want to. 'Cause I'd miss you and all, too."

"Look, I went through the exact same thing five years ago. The end of seventh grade and my parents were splitting… it was horrible. But you know what I learned? There's always someone who will be able to help you get through it. Your best friend, or your sibling, or a guidance counselor, or your boyfriend, or girlfriend, or whoever. They'll be there for you, and you know, you've got to remember that this isn't your fault—it was your parents who started fighting, and you can't stop it. If they made a mistake, you weren't it. It probably would have happened anyway. You've got to learn to accept the fact that they're divorcing… and they won't be together… but that doesn't mean it has to ruin your life completely, because it was not your fault."

There was another long pause after his speech, as Val looked up at the sky and thought.

"There are guardian angels, you know," she informed him.

"Yeah."

"I thought I lost mine, but you know what?" She turned and smiled at him. "It was here all the time."

"Oh, yeah?" He stood up and held out his hand to her. "So, you made your decision?"

"Almost." Before he was completely sure what was going on, she had placed her lips on his and was kissing him.

"Now, about that decision…" he began as the kiss ended.

"Come off it, Connell." She grinned, a genuine smile that had been missing too much lately and might take a while to get back permanently, but was here right now all the same. "I wouldn't run away from you."

"You were about to," he reminded her.

"I just fooled you."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

"Come on, there are better ways to compromise," he told her with a grin. Val tentatively put her arms around his neck.

"Yeah. And we have as long as we need to do it."

"As long as you don't run away."

"Of course not."

Runaway, runaway  
Wanna hold on to you but you're going away  
Runaway, runaway  
Wanna hold you tomorrow but you're leaving today  
Runaway runaway  
Hold on to you but you're going away  
But you're leaving today  
But you're leaving today

Whoo yeah, that was sucky. That's okay though, I like sucky fics! Even though I *do* like good fics better… huh. Anywhos. I'm leaving for camp EARLY Saturday morning, so for two weeks I will disappear from ff.n… and then I go to Maine for three weeks… anywhos, I'm not going to be here for a while, though I'll try to post the other fic… this is SORT OF part of the_ Broken Days _duet, which is about basically the *sob* angst of Tyler and Val's family life. Yes, they suck. Yes, I am aware. The first one might be posted before I leave, if I can hurry up and finish it. The second one? I dunno when that comes out, but… anyways. See you laters.

---IVY

Disclaimer: Song is "Runaway" or "Falls Apart" by Sugar Ray, and it duly belongs to them. Thanks to Aricraze with the whole song thing. The Tori Amos song is "Silent All These Years", and is an excellent song. I love. Maureen did write a songfic with it… I might… probably not—I have too many stories as it is. {Still Waiting For You is under construction, for all those who wanted to know.} Characters belong to Alliance Atlantis, and the sucky story belongs to me. *sighs* Why do I always get the bad stuff?


End file.
